This invention relates to a message system, and to a method of operating a message system.
The publication of information by private individuals using the Internet is now increasingly common. One example of such a publication is known as a blog. A blog is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary and descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. Many blogs provide commentary on a particular topic, while others function as personal online diaries. A typical blog may combine text, images, and links to other web pages. Micro-blogging is a type of blogging, which consists of blogs with very short posts.
An example of such a micro-blogging service is Twitter (http://twitter.com), which is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Twitter and other similar variants allow users to build up a list of other users of whom they would like to keep track. Occasionally, one of a users connected “friends” may reply to another user who is not in the user's list of friends, thus leaving some conversations out of the reach of the user without further research.